FAQs for incoming students
Blackboard is the virtual platform that professors and students use to communicate and share documents. In Blackboard you can find the syllabus of the subject and all the information regarding the professor and the materials that will be used in class. In order to get Blackboard access, please use the username and password provided at your arrival by the Department of International Relations and Cooperation (Área de Relaciones Internacionales y Cooperación, building 6). Then you will have to register the subjects that you are going to take in the university as explained during the welcome meeting and in a few days, you will have access to the virtual subjects in which you have registered. The UPO gives Erasmus students some weeks to decide which subjects they want to take, so the first weeks you won’t have access to Blackboard, but you can ask the professor or your classmates for the information regarding the subject.
Here: https://www.upo.es/facultad-ciencias-experimentales/es/estudiantes/horarios/
If you want to follow the different steps, timetables are available at the Faculty of Experimental Sciences website https://www.upo.es/facultad-ciencias-experimentales/, clicking on the link “Horarios”.
Before you start looking for a subject, you have to know the following information about it in order to find it in the timetable:
- In which semester is it taught? As you can see, in the website information is divided into two semesters.
- How is this Degree organized? This Degree is organized into different types of teaching systems. Each subject has two or three types of teaching systems:
- General teaching sessions (EB). There are 60 students approximately in this type of session.
- Theory-into-practice sessions (EPD). These sessions usually take place at the laboratory at the building 23 and consist of groups of 20 students.
- Guided academic activities (AD). In these sessions, there are groups of 10 students approximately that carry out tasks under the supervision of the teacher.
The syllabuses are also available at the Faculty of Experimental Sciences website https://www.upo.es/facultad-ciencias-experimentales/, by clicking on “Estudiantes” and then, the link “Information for incoming students” and then “programs and content of the subjects” and here you choose your degree and subject.
By metro or by bus.
The Faculty of Experimental Sciences allows Erasmus students to choose subjects of any of the three offered degrees. You can enroll in different subjects of the degrees in Biotechnology, Environmental Sciences or Human Nutrition and Dietetics, as long as the subjects’ timetables do not coincide. You can also enroll in subjects of different years. Nonetheless, there will be a minimum and maximum number of Erasmus students per class due to the limited space in the laboratories. There is a maximum of international students in each EB and EPD. This number will depend on each subject and it will determine if you can enroll in that subject. If there are Erasmus without some subjects, there will be a deadline of incidences (managed by the Department of International Relations and Cooperation, ARIC). The Faculty will do its best to enable a place for the Erasmus student as long as it does not go over the maximum number of students in EPD sessions.
The application procedure of Erasmus students is managed by the Department of International Relations and Cooperation (ARIC). This office is located at the building 6, ground floor and its timetable is from Mondays to Fridays, 9:00 a.m. to 2 p.m. You can also contact the staff via email: erasmus@upo.es and aric@upo.es. Telephone: (+34) 954 34 93 97, (+34) 954 34 82 85 and (+34) 954 34 82 83. Webpage: https://www.upo.es/aric/foreign-students/
It is recommended to have at least the Spanish level B1, as a general rule, so the student can understand easily what is taught in the sessions. Nonetheless, some subjects are taught in English.
The following link will show you the subjects taught in English offered by the Faculty: download here
1 ECTS credit is equivalent to 25 student’s working hours. 30 % of this time period corresponds to a face-to-face activity (which can be lessons, but also field trips, lectures or seminars); 60 % is the student’s personal work and 10 % makes reference to assessment activities (exams, reading tests, submission of
Degree timetables are available in the website of the Faculty of Experimental Sciences. On the other hand, you can find lecture rooms by clicking on links “Horarios semanales” (Week-long timetables). Your timetables are available and updated in the section of “Servicios personales” (Personal Services) (http://www.upo.es/-> “Acceso personalizado” [Personalized Access]).
Firstly, you have to review your exam or grade with your professor (on the indicated day and hour). Then, you will be able to ask the Department Direction for reviewing the grade by means of a reasoned document, within five working days of the finalization of the review term with the professor. The content of the request will must be the following: A) Name and Surname of the applicant, as well as his/her degree, school year and group to which he/she belongs and the subject for which he/she asks for a review. B) E-mail for receiving notifications. C) Act whose review is requested. D) Justified reason of the request. You can find the whole procedure between the articles 26 and 28 of the “Normativa de evaluación de los estudiantes de grado de la UPO” (Assessment Normative for UPO Degree Students).
Firstly, you have to talk to professors in charge of the subject. Then, if you aren’t provided any solution, you can contact the semester or year coordinating teacher, who will be responsible for communicating your incidence to the Academic Director of the Degree.
People who will have the right to take a single test in the first call (year call) are those students who cannot sit continuous-evaluation tests due to one of the causes defined in the Normativa de evaluación de los estudiantes de grado de la UPO:
- Being enrolled in a mobility program or in a high-level athlete program.
- Labor reasons.
- Serious health problems.
- Properly-confirmed events of force majeure.
In that case, if and when you communicate the circumstance to the professor in charge of the subject before the end of face-to-face teaching period, students will have right to receive an assessment of the total of her/his knowledge and competences that appear in the syllabus by means of a single-test assessment system.
In order to redirect institutional emails, it is recommended to read the following document: Guide for redirecting emails to another account.
Group Changes
Yes, University allows you to switch and the Faculty allows you to change to a different group.
The Faculty opens a deadline so that you can ask for group changes. Changes are made by means of a request which needs to be submitted to “Registro General” (General Registry) and properly justified. For that reason, the Deanery will publish a deadline in order to submit requests of group change at the beginning of each semester, in the “Tablón Electrónico Oficial” (Electronic Bulletin Board)
The Faculty opens a deadline so that you can ask for group changes. Changes are made by means of a request which needs to be submitted to “Registro General” (General Registry) and properly justified. For that reason, the Deanery will publish a deadline in order to submit requests of group change at the beginning of each semester, in the “Tablón Electrónico Oficial” (Electronic Bulletin Board).
Dates in order to ask for a permuta are published in Annex 1 from the “Normativa de Matrícula” (Registration Normative), which is attached at the end of this document and you can consult it by searching “Normativa matrícula alumnos” (Students Registration Normative) in the UPO website. For any subject, you can ask for a permuta from 16th to 27th September 2019 (permutas of first and second-semester subjects, as well as that of the annual ones) and from 13th to 31st January 2020 (exclusively for second-semester subjects), once you have formalized your registration and you have found some student who agrees with the exchange of his/her group with you in one or several subjects. Both of you must complete (preferably in the same day) the permutas’ questionnaire which you can find in Servicios Personales on the website. In this questionnaire, you have to complete a line per subject, writing the ID number of the student with whom you are going to exchange the group (you can choose a different student in each subject). Once the veracity of the request data has been verified, the permuta will have complete validity (although it may take a few days before it is incorporated to your record); conversely, request will be denied. The permuta program won’t be able to be applied to those subjects being taken in a(n) (outgoing) mobility regime. If you are wrong and you want to modify or correct your permuta request, you have to send an email to permutas@upo.es.
No. No changes are allowed if they haven’t been made through any of these two means. If you don’t do it in this way, you will continue to appear on the assigned class lists.